After spending more time wrangling with the Mythcon program book's lay out (somehow it got plagued with some ghost headers that messed up some pages), I was finally able to post the next installment  on the Scribbler's Guide blog. 

This time, I take on Dr. Gregory House, misanthrope.  He's "divine" did you know?


More of these short analyses coming -- and all of the ideas I'm drawing on can be found in The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth.  Try it!  You'll like it!

Tags: mythcon, mythic motifs, scribbler's guide, television

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I got an idea for something coming up in my novel.  I thought, "Oh, hey, that's an interesting idea.  I'll write it down in the morning."  Of course, you don't always remember in the morning things that occured to you late at night, especially just before sleeping.  Happily, I remembered that point too.  I went back into the living room, turned on the light, went to my desk and got out the notebook where I write down the odd out-of-sequence ideas that come to me about the current work.

I have to say that it is really, really tempting to explain the specifics of what this idea is, because the way it fits in with the story is very satisfying.  But, because I think it will make a particular moment in the story even more emotionally powerful, I don't want to spoil the surprise.

But I do want to talk about it generally.

( Read more... )

Tags: arveniem, creativity, ring of adonel, sayers, writing

Tags: mythic motifs, scribbler's guide, star trek

So, there have been commercials lately for the latest search enging - bing.com.  Given that I spent 18 years doing research and have gone through the evolution of many search engines, I thought I would check it out today.

Now, mind you, these days I only keep TWO search engines on my "Favorites" list: Alta Vista and Google.  Google is more sensitive to general pop culture flow when searching, but Alta Vista remains more fine tuned when looking for specific things.  Google tends to feed me pages of index pages when I'm searching something specific (scientific or historical, for instance), whereas Alta Vista tends to list specific sites devoted to or mentioning my search object.

So, between the two of those, I haven't really needed another search engine.  Dogpile never did it for me, and Ask.com - well, their own pages are so loaded with advertising and pop-ups it annoys me into avoiding it.

Anyway, I decided to give Bing.com a try, testing searches for "ScribblerWorks" and for "Sarah Beach".

VERY interesting results.

For "ScribblerWorks" it did indeed turn up my main pages and blogs with that name on them.  Good.  It also turned up listings for those who have a link to my site on their one sites/blogs. Hmm, good.  It turned up post responses that have that either as my screenname or my email address included. Interesting.  And because of that last aspect (that it tracks the @scribblerworks.us as well), I also found a copy of the Press Release for The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth on a press release site. Very good - as I had not actually seen a copy of it out in circulation (paid for it, and approved the copy, but not actually seen it posted anywhere).

When I searched "Sarah Beach", right on the first page were two listings on Facebook for other Sarah Beaches -- I expected that, which is why I put my middle name in when I registered on Facebook.  That upped my "Sarah Beach" awareness by another two people.  Then I also found a Sarah Beach who does professional graphic design (and apparently has the SAME middle initial as I do!), and a Sarah Beach in San Diego who does copy writing apparently.  (What is it with "Sarah Beach" - we seem to have a high percentage of artists or writers or both!)

I have only skimmed through the other features of Bing (and not registered yet).  But it has a LIVE map reflecting freeway traffic as part of it's offerings, and that is one thing that's really useful, especially in Los Angeles.  So, I went ahead and added it to my "Favorites" list.  I'll continue exploring it, but so far, it looks very promising. 

Just thought I'd throw this preliminary recommendation out there.

Tags: computers, internet

One of the things about creating a totally new fantasy world is that you don't want it to sound too much like "this world".  And I certainly didn't want to sound like I was copying Tolkien bit for bit.

Today, I was going along, working on some new text in The Ring of Adonel, moving the story forward, and I had a character say "I will go tell the lords."

And I stopped.

Because, the reality was that he was doing more than just talking to those the common folk would consider "lordly".  He was going to talk to the leaders of the three Fynlaren Houses.  One of which now is actually a woman.  And suddenly, I realized that I wanted a term that was not quite as laden with gender baggage as "lord".

So, I wanted a term that would refer to these specific characters as the principal figures of their "tribes".  And I didn't want it to be a really obvious borrowing from real world cultures.

After running through the thesaurus looking for possibilities, I decided to start mining Old Irish.  I'd studied it in graduate school, and have a grammar book, that glosses a lot of the vocabulary.  So I drew up a list of English words that had meanings that could be applied to the position under consideration: head, crown, leader, first, lord, one, master, rule, sight, voice, king.  As I grazed through the book, other possibilities of meaning suggested themselves: high, great, very great, highest, treasure, gift, I judge, holds fast, hero, forehead.  In the end, I went with one of the words for "high", ard, and a term for "prince", mal.  Combining them, I get ardmal (sing., with ardmalen for plural -- the "-en" ending for plurals has already been established).

Of course, after coming up with the term, I then had to go back through the manuscript as it stands and replace the terms.  Except that not every instance of "lord" is being replaced, because it is still used as a generic honorific.  And then, also, there's the decisions about when to capitalize it and when not to. 

I believe it's these little touches that are important to creating the sense of place, the sense of existence, of a fantasy world.  Especially for dealing with things that we don't have. 

It's also one of those things that I felt satisfied with. Probably a detail others won't be interested in, but there it is: today's achievement in my work.  :D

Tags: fantasy, ring of adonel, world building, writing

The thing about self-publishing, especially the print-on-demand route, is getting the word out about your book. And getting it available. 

Even if you mention it and link to the book's page a lot on the internet, it still is found mostly by those who are already looking for you or your subject matter.  You don't usually catch the attention of the casual passer-by.  So, there is a point in wanting to get at least a few copies into book stores.

Yeah, so how do you get a print-on-demand book into stores?  Well, you want to make sure that your book is available through Baker & Taylor, for instance.  You won't get as big a royalty on those sales, but you do spread your territory.

HOWEVER, it turns out, that being listed through Baker & Taylor isn't actually enough to really get your book in a store.  In the course of my ongoing education in the business of promoting a self-published book (in this case, The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth), I have learned that stores want the surity of the books being returnable to B&T.  And to have your book listed on THAT basis, there is an annual fee that runs something like $400 a year.  I assume that this fee is covered as one of the usual publication costs when a "regular" publishing house is putting out your book.

On top of that, if you are planning a signing at a store, you want to be sure that Baker & Taylor have at least 20 copies of your book already printed and in their warehouse.   Because of the time required to make POD books, it's better that actual physical copies are at hand with B&T when stores place their orders.

Oh, joy.

So here I sit, at a time when my personal finances are very tight.  I really want to get the book into certain book stores, but it has become obvious that those stores are not going to order copies unless the "returnable" option is in place.

What's that saying? It costs money to make money?  Not that I wrote this book to make mega-bucks.  I wrote it because I felt there was a need for it, and I knew the stuff for it.  I like to think I did a good job (well, nobody has told me otherwise, so far).  But I would like to get it out in front of a bigger audience.  Do my readers talk about it to other people? Shilling for me?  My sales figures would indicate -- not too much.  Not that I'm laying a guilt trip on anyone other than myself.  I'm still mastering the arts of marketing.  And happily, there is no expiration date on the book: it will ALWAYS be timely for writers! Even if I say so myself.

Anyway, I will eventually cough up the Baker & Taylor fee. (I still need to do some research on the whole process.)  It's just deciding when to add this to my debt-load.

The business of publication is a new realm for me.  And more complicated and detailed than I anticipated.  Hey ho.

Tags: publication, scribbler's guide, writing

Colleen Doran let me guest blog on her site again, and this time I decided to have some fun using all my hard work on mythic archetypes for The Scribbler's Guide to the Land of Myth, and analyse Captains Kirk and Picard from the Star Trek universe.

READ IT HERE

Yeah, I'm stirring the pot a little bit.

Tags: colleen doran, mythic motifs, scribbler's guide, star trek

I've mentioned before the search threads that bring people to my website.  It's interesting to look at them, and hey! it occasionally gives me something to talk about here on LiveJournal.

I decided to go for something off-beat this time.

Almost every month there's at least one search thread that has brought someone to my site that involves The X-Files and the various names for Bigfoot.  The reason I gets hits for that search thread is that I posted a PDF of an X-Files spec script I did a long time ago that used the Sasquatch. (You can find the intro page for the script here )

 

( Read more... )

Tags: bigfoot, cryptozoology, sasquatch, screenwriting, scribblerworks, television, x-files

My day started with going out to the archery range and doing a bit of shooting.  Then I headed over to my regular comic shop to pick up the week's comics (because I hadn't gotten there on New Comic Day - AKA Wednesday).  And then, to the ArcLight Theaters where Star Trek was showing.  I had not actually had anything to eat, so I selected a show 45 minutes later, so I could get a burger.

Happily fed, I went into the theater and got comfortable.

And thoroughly enjoyed the film. 

My friend eldritchhobbit  has compared Star Trek to the Arthuriad.  And I agree with her in a lot of ways.

( Boldly go along with me here )

Tags: arthurian stories, fanfic, hat, movies, star trek, television

I think I've mentioned it before, but I am my own webmaster for my website,ScribblerWorks.  When I began, three years ago, it seemed like a good idea that I learn to do it all myself, so that I would not be dependant on someone else when I wanted to update the site.  Of course, that meant learning to use a webpage building program.  I ended up settling on Dreamweaver.  I had to go with the 4.0 version, because the computer I was working on at the time couldn't support a higher / later version.  I was (and am) content enough.  I learned how to do most things, and keep manuals at hand to figure out little things I either forget or haven't learned yet.

Still, I've been doing it entirely on the level of "I want to do this specific thing, how do I do that?"  I have NOT been learning webpage building in the sense of knowing the broader, over-all principles.

This has created a few odd things, now that I've moved over to my newer laptop to do the work.

 

( Adventures (and grouses) in webpage building )

Tags: christmas, computers, learning, mythlore, mythopoesis, poetry, scribbler's guide, scribblerworks, website